Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

‘You’re younger than everyone else,’ she said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Everyone else who has a farm. And you’re a woman.’

‘I am,’ I said, and blew out smoke. For the first time she raised her eyebrows, but she closed her eyes as she did it which perhaps meant it was not surprise but something else. Disgust maybe.

‘Is that man you’re hanging out with your boyfriend?’

I frowned. ‘Have you been watching me?’

She shrugged again.

‘He’s just passing through. I don’t really know him.’

‘You just let people you don’t know stay in your house? Well, I suppose it keeps it fresh. You know he’s been doing some pretty funny shit around the place.’

‘What kind of funny shit?’

She shrugged again. ‘Sings to your dog quite a lot.’

We both looked at Dog, who gave a slow wag of his tail then looked away up the hill like he was thinking of something else.

‘He’s a strange man,’ I said.

Marcie smiled, and I smiled back. I would have liked her if I was her age.

‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

She behaved as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘So this vendetta against the foxes — how come there are so many about if you lay all this poison for them?’

‘I don’t usually.’

‘So why now?’

‘Something’s been killing my sheep.’

‘Has it?’

‘It has. In fact, I thought it might have something to do with your lot.’

Marcie’s eyes widened but again she didn’t really address what I said. ‘I have this cousin, Wesley, on my mum’s side — he’s on the mainland but up north, way up north — and he’s just got in trouble for messing with horses.’

‘What kind of messing?’

‘What — do I have to spell it out for you? He fucked a horse,’ she said and there was silence. Then Marcie giggled and I smiled.

‘Don’t worry about spelling it out for me in the future,’ I said.

She took her can out of her pocket and took a swig. It was super-strength lager. After a pause she offered it to me. I shook my head.

‘Aren’t you young to drink?’

She cocked her head to the side. ‘Something?’

‘Huh?’

‘You didn’t say foxes are killing your sheep — you said something is killing your sheep. So you don’t really think it’s foxes?’

‘I don’t know.’ I used the cigarette to pause the conversation. I blew smoke out and it disappeared against the white sky. ‘Do you ever see… anything?’ I said. ‘I mean it feels like you’re out there all the time.’

Marcie smiled. ‘We see everything,’ she said, like she thought she was a teen witch. ‘I’ve seen things you couldn’t imagine.’ She looked into the distance and her smile softened a little. ‘But mostly, it’s just people having sex with each other.’

‘Anything that might be killing my sheep? Anybody?’

‘Oh!’ she said loudly. ‘There was a big fuck-off bear or some shit that Samson was telling us about.’

‘A bear?’

‘Not a bear — a big cat or a big dog or something. A beast. Samson’s full of shit though. He’s a bit… retarded, if that’s allowed. Mentally challenged? I don’t know. It’s not as bad as when my dad calls them coloureds.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he doesn’t want any coloured people moving into the lane, not because he’s racist but because it’ll mean the house is worth less.’

‘What did Samson say, about the beast?’

‘Oh, I don’t know — it might have just had big feet or teeth or something. I think he’s telling stories. He likes telling stories. Sometimes he camps in the woods, and he reckons something was licking his tent in the night, that he shone his torch on it and it was this cat-eyed thing. I told him, it’s just the weed.’ She glanced at me when she said ‘weed’.

We watched rain start across the valley. Marcie dropped her cigarette on the ground and pressed it into the mud with her heel.

We drive through an old flaky wooden gate and up to a homestead. I turn to look in all directions, but there is nothing to see — some black hills long and far in the distance, a backdrop for the desert. I can see flies in the air, and my window-side arm is sunburnt.

‘Well, here we are then!’ Otto says brightly, and I can tell he’s excited to show me the place. An old dog, far older than the photograph he showed me from his wallet, lumbers up to us.

‘This must be Kelly?’ I say in a voice I reckon a dog would like. The dog looks at me blankly through clouded eyes. She’s got a grey muzzle and patches of dry skin show through on her flank. Poor old thing , I think.

‘Kelly, meet Jake,’ says Otto, and I squat down to make friends, but she keeps her distance. Just gives me that look like I’m not there, and turns and heads back behind the house, her ears flat to her head against the flies. ‘She gets cranky when I leave without her,’ he explains.

I get a small tour. ‘Like I said, we’re pretty much self-sufficient here,’ says Otto, and I wonder if there’s a greener patch around the back for vegetables. There is a hairy-looking paddock next to the house, but it’s dry and wild. ‘We slaughter our own sheep, and so really it’s just basics we shop for, twice a month or so. Bread, eggs and beer. I’ve tried a few chickens, but they don’t last long — Kelly doesn’t take to them too well.’ I wonder if ‘we’ means there’s someone else around the place or if he just means his dog. There is no green space around the back, there’s just the dunny and then beyond that, the rest of everything. The watering hole has dried up because of the drought, he tells me, and it doesn’t seem right to say anything more on the subject. The house is made of splintery weatherboard. It’s small, the kind you see carted up and down highways on the back of road trains.

Otto shows me into a bedroom. It’s an odd room, there’s a Winnie the Pooh poster on the wall and the narrow single bed’s doona has a faded pony on it. The room is painted pale blancmange and there’s a smallish window with no glass but with mosquito netting nailed over it. It smells of air freshener.

‘Did it up meself,’ Otto says with pride.

I start to get twitchy once the sun goes down. Otto makes bacon sandwiches for tea, which smell and taste of other meats. I don’t know what the plan is, what he’s expecting from me. ‘You like Shortland Street ?’ he says as he pats the sofa next to him. I sit down and he puts a hand around the back of my neck so that I can smell the undercarriage of his arm.

‘Never seen it,’ I say, and he looks at me like I’m telling him I’ve never seen the sea. The theme tune comes on, and Otto looks at me with meaning as he sings it.

Is it you or is it me?

Lately I’ve been lost it seems.

I think a change is what I need.

If I’m looking for a chance I’ve a dream.

Shortland Street…

His eyes mist over and he holds the last note long enough that the television has gotten well into the second verse before he’s finished. He shakes his head. ‘That’s just beautiful,’ he says, ‘that song. Just beautiful.’ And for the next half-hour we watch comings and goings at a hospital. Kelly is sitting outside looking through the fly-screen at me.

Once the programme is over, Otto stretches and says, ‘Right-e-o, time for bed,’ and I think, Here we go, this’ll make things clearer . He leads me into the pink room and sits on the edge of the bed chatting about what we’ll do tomorrow.

‘I’ll take you into town so you can get acquainted with the general store, then we’ll go and show you the sheep. Kelly needs some tick drops, so remind me about those.’ I don’t know what the protocol is, so I change into the T-shirt I sleep in while he’s talking. I don’t turn my back to him when I take my top off but he just carries on, and so I sit next to him on the bed and he tells me about his sheep. ‘The ex-wife’s show sheep — merinos, she insisted on, even though I told her, too dry out here, they take looking after. She went on and on, and then once I got them for her she lost interest. Expensive buggers they are too. And then, well, she went, and so I just use them for meat. I told her, right off the bat, those sorta sheep are no good out here where there’s no grass — need a desert sheep, something tough and wiry. She wouldn’t listen though, just like with her poofy little dog she brought along. Me and Kelly were clear to her about that dog, we warned her. No good with your peking-fuckin-eses, a farm. Carpet snake I reckon, took it under the house, probably swallowed the nut whole.’